Lawrence Martin has some colourful stories to tell

Lawrence Martin speaking into a mic at a podium on Alumni Day

Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin is sharing stories from his 40-year career in journalism at an Alumni Day talk.


Lawrence Martin has met with prime ministers, presidents, Soviet leaders and hockey legends. He’s written 10 books on sports and politics. He established the Globe and Mail’s Moscow bureau at the height of the Cold War.

Safe to say he has some stories to tell. And now’s your chance to hear them.

Martin will be on campus this weekend, giving a talk as part of Alumni Day events.

Besides sharing colourful stories from his award-winning, 40-year career in journalism — which started right here at Mac — Martin says he wants to talk about technology  (“It’s the biggest threat facing mankind, even bigger than climate change”), as well as the increasing importance of getting a good education in today’s world.

“When I went to university, we all figured it’d be a natural progression toward enlightenment — the more we learned, the better and more advanced society would be.”

“But the Internet has upended all that,” he says. “You have a million voices, and every one of them has a platform,” whether they’re telling the truth or not.

“That’s great from a democratic point of view, to have more voices speaking,” he notes. “But it also allows people to seek out false information that confirms their biases,” rather than thinking critically about information that is based on evidence and facts.

Ultimately, that’s what has led to the rise of populists around the world, Martin says. “They have anti-immigrant values, anti-environment values, anti-science values — it’s depressing.”

And it makes it that much more important for students today to learn how to think critically, he says.

Martin will also touch on how living in Washington under the Trump administration has given him a new appreciation for Canada.

“This is such a great country. It can’t be screwed up, no matter how hard we try,” he says.

“We’ve had funny governments, weird leaders and bad leaders. But we are endowed with such wealth, such riches, such a fortuitous location. And with an immigrant population that over time has invariably shown good judgment.”

“Whenever a government wants take things go too far, Canadians say, ‘Hold on; we have these values of fairness and equality and you can’t do that.’

“Not that we’re great by every yardstick, but we are a more fair-minded population and country,” he adds. “We don’t have this chaos that the U.S. has under Trump, or the negative environment he’s brought to everything. He wants to divide everybody instead of bringing people together.”

Martin says today’s students also have the advantage that comes with fresh perspective. “Once you’ve seen a lot, you’re not as outraged by some things that you used to be outraged by in your youth,” he says.

“Back when it was new to you, you thought, ‘Oh my god this is awful.’ But at my age, you’ve seen it so often, you don’t make such a big deal out of it. It’s the youth who get it right by raising alarms over what they see.”

Globe and Mail Washington columnist Lawrence Martin is speaking on Saturday, June 1 as part of Alumni Day events. Admission to his talk is free. Learn more and register here.

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